The Transmigration of Souls

by William Barton

  We followed a path down the cliffside, Dale wanting to hold my hand for some reason he couldn’t explain. Wouldn’t explain. You knew that. Wouldn’t. He had a way with words. Said what he wanted to say: I keep hoping, he’d said, that we’ll open a gate one day and find my world. One of them at least.

  “Sergeant!”

  Bokaitis, pointing southward, at a point not far above the horizon. Something flaring in the sky, garish green fire, a puff of dark smoke...

  She lifted her M-80 and looked through the gunsight. Jesus. What the fuck is that? Like a dirigible, but...

  Sharp-eyed Tarantellula said, “I spotted it just a fraction of a second before the explosion. Thought I saw missiles tracking.”

  Away on the edge of the world, the thing went down, crash smoke rising into a tall, dense plume. Rising, blowing away on the wind. “Let’s go.” Shouldering her rifle.

  Brucie, fascinated technician, scowled and said, “What about this?” Gesturing at the starship.

  “Forget it.” Forget about spoiled wonders. Fresh wonders waiting for us. Waiting somewhere. What else is waiting? Are you out here, Dale? Is that really what I’m doing, looking for my lost love, my lost gray fat man, like some silly schoolgirl mooning over a romance novel? Fucking Christ. “Let’s go.”

  They made it about half way to the crash site, running along the base of the cliffs, following an obviously fresh trail, before Muldoon, bringing up the rear, eyes behind them, raised the alarm. Kincaid, on point, was looking down at well scuffled sand, surface turned over, lighter than the well-settled sand everywhere else. Obviously just the four of them. The three surviving Arabs. The Chinaman. What the Hell do I do with them when I catch them? Put them in irons and drag them back through the Gate to the Moon? Drag them back, bomb the Gate, go home and face Athelstan’s wrath? Maybe. Or turn them over to Bokaitis. Little cavegirl smart enough to get this silly patrol back home. Probably smart enough to know she should just blow the Gate and get the fuck out of there. Go home. Athelstan’ll pin a fucking medal on your pretty left tit, cavegirl.

  Where the Hell would I go? He’s not really out here, you know. And even if he is, it’s been a long damned time. We aren’t the same people we were then. Not even in our memories. Just remembering the last time I thought I was in love. Maybe the only time I ever was?

  How the fuck do I know?

  I thought I was then.

  So long ago...

  Muldoon’s moron voice was urgent, with just the right touch of impending panic. “Sarge?”

  She turned and looked. “Holy shit...” Big green things. Dark green. Big bugs, with long, stalky legs. Things like praying mantises the size of dinosaurs. Big bug eyes looking right at them, triangular heads, mandibles opening and closing on squirmy darkness, insectile grins.

  Things on their backs, too. Skinny things, also green. Like skinny green ants, standing on their hind legs, holding the reins of their mantis mounts. Skinny green ants holding what looked like guns. Flicker-flicker-flash.

  Something thudded into the sand nearby. Bang. Brilliant flare of green fire, like a pulse of ball lightening at their feet, grains of sand whispering through the air, sharp grains crackling on their faces and bare hands. There was a brief feeling of static electricity in the air, a familiar ozone smell.

  “Curtainfields up!” Silvery shadows forming around them.

  Kincaid lifted her M-80, sighted in, quick image of a green ant man in the scope, looking back at her, green ant man with something like a face, impassive. She fired, knocking him backwards off his mantis. Him? It.

  Rapid pop-pop-pop as Bokaitis and Tarantellula fired in counterpoint, Muldoon just standing by, rifle dangling from one hand, looking bewildered. Ripple of return fire, flicker-flash, from the ant men, green fire boiling the sand around them. Missed us. Missed. Bad aim? No. Projectiles curving away at the last instant. Curtainfield fucking up their guidance systems. Good.

  Pins and needles inside my belly, though. Bad news, I think...

  She said, “Let’s get the Hell out of here.”

  Muldoon turned and ran, surprisingly light on his feet, in his polio-cripple boots.

  They didn’t quite make it to the nearest ravine, the nearest route up into the cliffs, before the ant-men woke up to what was wrong with their aim and started firing on them with unguided solid shot, dumdum slamming into Muldoon’s back, knocking him off his feet, rifle spinning away into the dust. He’d gotten up, bawling wordless terror, and run for a pile of rocks, angular red rubble of big sandstone shards nearby.

  Stopped to pick up his weapon, though. Not as bad as he seems.

  Crouching down now, shooting through the chinks of their little fortress, watching the ant men ride round and round, ducking the little green explosions, explosive light reflected off the faceted, clear, metallic eyes of their mounts.

  Images of what might happen. Of being held in those hard bug hands, of giant mantis heads bending down, so very delicate, you see, bending down, grasping mandibles gaping open, gaping, chewing, chewing.

  3V educational video image, of a mantis man continuing to fuck a mantis woman, though his head was eaten away, his arms and shoulders gone. What the Hell was it my friend Jenny said? Look at that. Amused disgust in her voice: Men are all the same.

  Another bright green explosion on the edge of their sanctuary, rock fragments whining around, making them flinch, though the curtainfields continued to do their job. More tingling inside. Each time, Kincaid would look at her combat monitor, dusty old thing with a crude old battery, clipped neatly to her old web belt. With every explosion, there was a burst of hard gamma radiation.

  Curtainfields taking the brunt of it, but... Right. Symbiotes’ll be busy tonight, dealing with the damage. If they get the chance. Enough hard radiation and the symbiotes’ll die. Wonder what the symbiotes’ll do when they wake up inside a giant mantis? Eat it? Remanufacture it into me? That’d be... odd. All sorts of philosophical bullshit welling up.

  Bang. Green fire. Bits of rock rattling around their cage. Strange buzzing behind the eyes, energetic photons going one-two one-two and through and through...

  “Jesus, Sarge...” Bokaitis suddenly up on her knees, M-80 poking out through the rocks, going pop,pop, pop, skinny green ant men flying off their mounts, bowling through the air like so many wriggling green pinwheels.

  Brucie Big-Dick, mighty hero of the starways, cowering on the ground now, weaponless Brucie, covering his head, uselessly, with his arms. Tarantellula starting to squirm over to the next hole, figuring, maybe, she’d do the same. Maybe, in due course, the ant men would give up and run away. Or maybe we can just kill them all. Clicking her own weapon to full automatic, rising to one knee...

  WHAP.

  Bokaitis sitting down suddenly, hard on her backside, mouth hanging open, face full of surprise, ripples spilling around the sides of her curtainfield, ripples crossing over each other like ripples in water, making little crisscross interference patterns of light and dark.

  “Corporal?”

  Just sitting there.

  “Corky?”

  She fell over, leaning backward slowly, then falling in a little puff of red dust, dust billowing up around the curtainfield, little black dart sticking out of her right eye, keeping the lid propped open, surrounded by slivers of what looked like broken glass.

  Silence, then Tarantellula said, “Oh, shit.”

  Then, bangbangbang, green light flaring outside, pouring through the cracks in their rockpile, washing out the silvery screen of curtainfield light, creating a bilious world.

  Muldoon made a great, wordless shout, jumped up, banged his head on the rocks above, fell down, groveled, dropping his rifle, jumped up again and squirmed out through the nearest hole.

  “God damn it, no! Muldoon...”

  You could hear him out there for just a moment, hear the thudding of his heavy feet, hear that huge, silly voice crying, “Lilly! Save me Lilly...” Scuffle of running feet, praying mantis feet, then
silence.

  The two of them sitting in their hole, Kincaid feeling ill, suddenly wishing the whole world away, Tarantellula’s alien black face, featureless white eyes, unreadable. The dancer said, “Well.”

  Right. Kincaid patted her rifle and said, “You watch a lot of old war movies, do you?”

  Impassive stare, then a slow nod. Right. She said, “I... guess that’s why I’m here.”

  Kincaid said, “You remember Back to Bataan?”

  “I remember that guy with the bayonet through his throat...” Right.

  “You remember They Died with Their Boots On?”

  Another slow nod. “Garryowen.” Right.

  Kincaid put a fresh clip in her M-80, put it on full automatic and... White light flooded through the holes in the rockpile, strobe light, light closing their eyes. White light again. Blink. White light again. Long, slow rumble of fading thunder, far, far away, shuddering across the sky.

  “Fuck.” Kincaid got up on her knees and poked her head out the nearest hole, almost wishing her deadly dart would come, would come sailing in through her eye.

  Silence. Stillness. Dead praying mantises lying in motionless heaps. Dead green ant men lying scattered all around. Wisps of smoke, pale white smoke, almost invisible smoke, rising here and there, something dead at the base of each wisp. You could see Muldoon out there too, scattered around on the red sand in what looked like six or seven big bleeding pieces.

  Tarantellula, crouching at her side, said, “Well fuck, Sergeant.”

  Sudden movement, down at the base of the red cliff, Tarantellula lifting her rifle, taking aim, Kincaid putting out a hand to make her hold off. Two small figures walking out onto the desert sand, heading right for them. A smallish man with black hair. Built like a small man, anyway, short legs, long waist, big head with straight black hair, long hair confined by a white headband on which was painted some blood red design. Man in some kind of dark military uniform.

  Tall, slender woman beside him, dressed in a neat white pantsuit, the sort of thing a casual-minded woman might wear for a night out on the town, might wear to a nice restaurant, might...

  Kincaid lifted her M-80 and looked through the sight. The man appeared to be Oriental, maybe Chinese. That was definitely a Chinese character on his headband. The woman? Oddly familiar looking, also something of the Oriental about her. High cheekbones. Lovely dark eyes...

  The woman waved. Waved and called out, “Mother?”

  Tarantellula whispered, “What the fuck...”

  Lovely voice calling, “Mother, are you in there?”

  Brucie suddenly came out of his fetal cower, kneeling up, bright eyed. “Someone you know?”

  Kincaid looked again, feeling slightly dizzy. It was the gyndroid Amaterasu, the little fuckrobot she’d delivered to brother Roddie less than a week ago.

  o0o

  Back up in the hills, on a cliffside overlooking the crash site, Subaïda Rahman watched what was going on down below and thought, We’ve avoided thinking about it, avoided talking about it too much... thinking about where we are. About what’s happening to us. If it wasn’t obvious before, it’s obvious now. Obvious from the things we saw in Dale Millikan’s notebooks, the books filled in by his colleagues. Obvious from this... this...

  No handy phrase you could use to characterize it.

  Not in English. Not in Arabic.

  Down below, the ship was wrecked, smoldering, the fires going out, tower of dense smoke thinning, dissipating, blowing away into that impossible sky. Impossible. What kind of atmosphere scatters white light to bright orange? No atmosphere we can breathe. Dust, like on the real Mars? Doesn’t look like it.

  The airship was lying more or less on its side, hull crushed in, gaping holes opened on black interior compartments, superstructure twisted and toppled. Swarms of giant praying mantises circling round, things on their backs like huge green ants firing green fire-guns into the ship. Little beings spilling out, much smaller red ant sort of beings, trying to run, trying to fight back with red-fire guns of their own. Every now and again, a mantis creature would burst open, would fall down dead. Mostly, though, it was the red ant men who fell and died. Are those swords they’re wielding?

  Big green ant riding down on little red ant, scimitar swinging, little red head rolling in the red, red dust, green ant riding on.

  There is a version of the Many Worlds cosmology that allows time travel, the version that says, You Can’t Go Home Again. Travel into the past, you’ve broken a cusp. The past you go to does not lie in the past of the time you left. Travel back to your own time, you’ve broken another cusp. The home you return to is not the home you left, nor does it lie in the future of the past you visited.

  So do you come back and find another you living in your house, mothering your children, giving your husband a nice little blowjob on a sweaty weekend night?

  Well, no. She left on her own time-trip some time ago, you see.

  Do you notice any differences, small or large?

  Maybe, maybe not. Depends on the nature of the cusp-set you broke.

  But her husband is probably expecting his regular weekend blowjob, nonetheless. Men are like that, the pigs.

  Go back in time and kill your infant self. Go home. It’s not the same home, of course. And it is not a universe where you were killed as an infant. You can’t get there from here. Or can you?

  From every cusp, an infinity of histories spring. Every history is real, even the ones that are impossible. Every time you say, “When pigs have wings,” a cusp opens on a world in which, just then, pigs miraculously begin to fly.

  And Many Histories, Many Worlds implies...

  No. I don’t believe it...

  I don’t.

  Nobody believes it.

  Not really.

  Down below, the green ant men were just finishing off the red ant men. Men? Alireza, watching through binoculars, said, “They’re not killing all of them. The green ones are... doing something to some of the red ones.” Something odd in his voice.

  Rahman took the binoculars and looked. Big green ants, two or three, sometimes four together, holding little red ants on the ground. Green ants squirming, squirming. Red ants held still for whatever it was. She took the binoculars away from her eyes.

  So you’ve come to an alternate universe. An alternate universe in which everything is different. Except one thing. Well... Except one class of things. The red ants already dead must be the males.

  Scrape of noise. Alireza, with a muttered exclamation, bucking up off the ground, spinning round, aiming his American rifle. Ling bug-eyed, drawing his little pistol with its four little dimetrodon-slaying bullets.

  Subaïda Rahman sitting on her heels. Merely staring.

  They were a handsome couple, the woman tall and very thin, clad in sleek black leather, leather with that skin-wrinkle buff finish that only real leather can possess. Handsome, smooth white face, dark blonde hair with just the right waviness-property. Blue on blue eyes. Wide eyes. Big girl eyes. The sort of big girl eyes you knew men fell for, even in deepest, darkest Arabia.

  She thought, Well. Here’s our fashion model, perhaps...

  The man. Rahman could feel her cheeks flush. A squat, muscular white man, a well-tanned Caucasian with curly black hair, curly, black, with sharp red highlights. Mulberry bright eyes. Square jaw, clean shaven of course, but with just the right touch of stubble, stubble that said, My blood boils with manly manly juices...

  Muscular man dressed in a leather harness, all rings and clips and carabiners, sandal straps running up his calves almost to his knees, baldric over shoulder, supporting a long, curved sword. A long-barreled pistol here, a short sword there. A jewel-handled dagger.

  A lot of hair on his chest. Really a lot of dense, fluffy black pubic hair below his ridged, muscular belly. Scrotum a large, weighty, wrinkled brown bag; thick, circumcised red penis dangling down a good fifteen centimeters... I wonder if I’m blushing? It feels like it. His bright blue, big blue e
yes on me now. Probably seeing...

  Slight shock. Behind them, three red ant men, slightly shorter than the humans, slimmer than ants of course, their body-plan details really very different. But the hard integument, the six jointed limbs. And stiff red faces, humanoid faces, frozen into place, expressionless masks of faces.

  The man looked over his shoulder and said something to the ants, a hard, metallic, tone language sort of speech, rising and falling, almost yodeled, clangclangclangclangclang...

  One of the ants reached out and put an arthropod hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently, clangclangclang right back.

  Ling stepped forward, fear making his eyes dart back and forth, looking from face to face, looking at the woman, the ant people, down at the man’s genitals, back up at his face. He held out his hand and said, “Hello. Ah... We’ve come from far away and, ah, don’t know this world.”

  The man stared at his hand. Stared. Glanced at the woman. “English Three, na? Awdd.”

  The woman looked them up and down, curious, obviously mystified. “Nawt herein, but...” A shrug, very pretty. “Are you with the Imperial Terran Navy? There’s not supposed to be anything...”

  Interesting. Not the slight Brit accent popular in the scientific world of the twenty-second century. Flat mid-American. Twenty-first century TV American. Rahman said, “Who are you?”

  The woman looked her in the face then, hard-eyed, aggressive, speculative. Woman to woman. “I’m Passiphaë Laing. This is Rhino Jensen.” Expectant then, waiting for some standard reaction. Nothing. Puzzled look. “Don’t you follow Crimson Desert?” Crackle of gunfire from below, flare of green, green light. Red ant people stirring nervously, clangclangclang...

  The man, Rhino Jensen? What a peculiar name... said, “We’d better get out of here. Not far to Kanthol. There’ll be another flight to Halian soon...” and clangclang to the ants.

  The woman, Laing, said, “I don’t know who the Hell you are or what the Hell you’re doing here, but you’re welcome to come along. In fact, you’d better. If the Beanies get hold of you...” Gesturing at the carnage below.